Mitt Romney, the multi-millionaire ex-businessman and presidential wannabe, is paying the price for making a joke this morning in Florida about his so-called unemployed status after listening to the plight of a group of jobless workers.
Some Republicans will pass this off as part of Romney’s long track record of using awkward, cornball humor in an attempt to relate to average Americans. But his remark was immediately seized upon by Americans United For Change, a liberal group with strong Democratic Party ties.
In a press release, the group provided an excerpt of a Wall Street Journal’s blog account of the Romney gaffe:
“Talking to unemployed Floridians about the struggle for work might not be the best time to joke that you, too, are unemployed, especially with a net worth that totals in the hundreds of millions.
“The former Massachusetts governor was trying to show his sympathy for those felled by the Great Recession when he told a group of unemployed people at a Tampa coffee shop, ‘I should tell my story. … I’m also unemployed.’
“He chuckled at the comment, as did the men around the table, but Democrats predictably pounced.”
Americans United For Change quickly compiled the Romney track record regarding his wealth and privilege and his actions as a business management consultant. At Bain Capital, five companies his private equity firm bought up went bankrupt. After his failed 2008 campaign, Romney put up for sale his palatial ski chalet in Deer Valley, Utah, one of four houses he owned at the time.
Beyond the blowback from liberals, the “unemployed” remark just serves as a reminder that some of the ’08 weaknesses the candidate demonstrated when interacting with voters have never gone away.
Last week, he attracted attention at a New Hampshire diner where he posed for pictures with waitresses, then pretended that one of them had pinched his butt. He also told “one of the corniest jokes heard on the campaign trail in a long time,” according to the WSJ.
He referred the diner’s owner to a customer who was eating Eggs Benedict with Hollandaise sauce, then suggested the dish be served on a hubcap, since “there’s no plate like chrome for the Hollandaise.”
At a picnic last month on a farm in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the GOP frontrunner looked at the backsides of two Percheron horses pulling a hay wagon and playfully asked whether they were geldings. When he was presented a plate of hotdogs, he exclaimed, “Hotdogs is my favorite kind of meat!”
